Pandora's Box
by denise1
Summary: Sometimes the darndest things can come up and smack you upside the head


# italics

Pandora's Box

By

Adi and Denise

It's amazing how someone can change a person's life without knowing it. Take Bob and Carol for example. Bob is a deliveryman, and so more aware of his power than most. Bob knows the things he delivers can have terrible consequences. Sometimes, during traffic jams he likes to think about the things he may be delivering. Not the sports equipment with the labeled boxes, but the boxes, or those boxes with just an address on them. He knows.

Carol is a graphic designer who works from her home. She is rather unaware of this rather insidious power. She's lived in Colorado Springs all her life, except for those three years in Italy. Sometimes when she's blocked and the blank piece of paper mocks her, she thinks of the way things roll sometimes, of how if she's late she might get fired, an ad might not get made and product might not sell and a hundred workers might be laid off. She tries to not think this way too often.

Today Bob and Carol will meet for the first time; today both will change a life.

XXX

Carol was having a rather good day. She had finished everything on her to-do list, and was trying to decide whether to see a movie or just vegetate in front of the TV until dinner when the doorbell rang.

"Who is it?" she asked looking through the peephole.

"UPS." Carol opened the door. "Good afternoon. I have a package here for a Samantha Carter-"

"I'm sorry that's my neighbor, one house down," she said and started to close the door.

"Yes, I know. She's not at home, there's a note on the door to deliver all packages here?"

"Oh right!" Carol slapped her forehead. "Sorry. Where do I sign?" Most of Carol's neighbors knew she worked from home, and several asked her to sign for their packages. Samantha Carter was the latest. It was right before Christmas, she had come by and somewhat shyly asked if it would be ok to leave a note on her door telling the deliverymen to come here. She had done most of her Christmas shopping on-line, she explained, and she was going to be out of town for a while. Carol had said it would be fine, smiled, assured the other woman that it wasn't too much of an imposition.

Since then Sam had left a note on her door whenever she went out of town, which was a lot. Carol signed at the X and Bob gave her the package. "Thank you," she said and closed the door. The package was small, about the size of a shoebox. Carol raised it to her ear and shook it gently; something rustled inside, but gave no clue as to its content. Carol smiled and put the box on the hall table next to the key bowl.

Sam didn't return for three days, and when she did it was the middle of the night and Carol was asleep. The next morning as soon as Carol saw the car in the driveway she had to sit on her hands to stop herself from going over there. The box had been mocking her from the day it arrived, teasing her with it's secrets, laughing at her from its hallway perch. All right, perhaps she was being dramatic but she hated not knowing, it drove her crazy.

Mid-morning, Carol couldn't take it anymore, picked up the box and marched right over to Sam's house and softly knocked on the door. No answer, she knocked harder, still nothing. Finally, she rang the doorbell telling herself if there was no answer this time she would simply walk away.

"Just a second!" Came the rather muffled reply. Two seconds later the door opened and there stood the mysterious Samantha Carter. Wearing black sweatpants and a gray T-shirt with the words Property of the USAF Academy print in black across it, licking something from off her fingers. "Carol!" She sounded surprised. "Hi." Apparently licking off the last of whatever was on her fingers, Sam let Carol in.

"The UPS guy dropped this off." Carol held out the brown-papered package, Sam took it after wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She examined it for a moment.

"It's from my uncle." She finally pronounced, surprised. She was starting to open it when the phone rang, Carol almost groaned in frustration.

"Carter?" However was on the other side of the line it must have been important because Sam immediately stood up straighter, "Yes, sir." Sir? "No sir, it's fine. I'll be right there." Sam looked up at Carol almost apologetically. "I'm sorry, I have to go."

Carol smiled; she had been the one intruding in the first place. "It's not a problem." She said heading out the door. "Have a good day."

"You too." Was the distracted reply.

Within a few days Carol forgot all about the package, all about her curiosity, about her power to change someone's life.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Many days later, Sam walked back into her house, relieved to finally be home. The last week had been especially busy; the first emergency that had resulted in her being recalled to the base leading into their mission to P2Q463 and their second and hopefully last encounter with Linea.

She'd spent so much of the last few days staring through a microscope she swore her eyes would never be the same again.

She tossed her jacket and keys aside and made her way into her living room, gratefully sinking down on the couch. She slid her shoes off and leaned back, sighing. She was not going to move from this couch until she had to go back to work Monday. Except for food, she needed that given that she knew her refrigerator was in its normal barren state. And a bath. She desperately needed quality time in her tub.

Ok. Food, bath…and sleep. She wasn't going to sleep on the couch when there was a perfectly good queen sized bed just down the hall.

So, maybe not all of her weekend was going to be spent on the couch, but a good portion of it was. She'd deliberately left all her work back at the base, promising herself a weekend off.

She reached for the remote and frowned when her eyes encountered the small box. That's right, Uncle Irving's package. She'd never had time to open it before she'd been recalled. Snagging the remote, she turned on the TV, more for noise than caring about what she was watching and pulled the box into her lap.

She made quick work of the brown paper, struggling a bit more with the heavy tape. A neatly folded piece of paper was on top and she read it.

#

_Sammy _(Was it some unwritten rule that all family members had to give you embarrassing nicknames)

How's my favorite niece? (You mean your only niece.)

I've decided to get out of this house of mine and find something more manageable. I simply can not believe all the stuff I've accumulated over the years.

_While going through some boxes, I found something of your mothers. I don't know if you remember, but I helped Jake clean out her stuff. Anyway, this was stuck back in the back of her closet. I thought about sending it to Mark, but I don't have his address._

_The box was locked when I found it, and I never had the heart to pry, so it's still locked. Just do me a favor kid; remember your old uncle if your mother managed to squirrel away millions of dollars._

_I'll be letting you know my new address and all. Don't be a stranger missy, or I'll just have to come to Colorado and pay you a visit._

_Uncle Irving_

#

Sam smiled as she deciphered his scrawl; almost hearing his voice as she read his teasing words. He was right. She hadn't called him in months.

She set the note aside and picked up the small wooden box. There was nothing extraordinary about it; it was just a simple cedar keepsake box.

Loath to destroy it, she got up, setting the box on the table and making her way to the hall. She retrieved her lockpicking tools and sat back down, applying herself to the tiny lock. It took her a matter of minutes to bypass the lock and open the box.

There wasn't much inside, no money, she was sure Irving would be disappointed. A folded newspaper clipping, a tattered black and white picture, a couple of dried flowers and a pair of letters. Feeling a bit like a voyeur, she carefully unfolded the clipping, reaching over to turn on the lamp so that she could see better.

It was from a paper she'd never heard of, but guessed was a small local gazette. The headline, 'Local Pilot Found Alive' piqued her interest and she read further, her heart lurching when she read her father's name. He'd been MIA? He'd never told her that. She read further, her experience with the military giving her the ability to read between the lines.

He'd been shot down over Viet Nam. They'd listed him MIA, eventually presuming him dead. What they hadn't known was that he was really a prisoner of war. It'd taken him six months to escape and make his way back to friendly territory.

She read how the Air Force had flown her mother to Guam, her very pregnant mother from the picture, and Mark so that they could be with her dad. Doing the math in her head, she realized that she'd had to have been conceived right before he shipped out.

Still in awe over this revelation about her father's past, she set the clipping aside, reaching for the picture. It was obviously Christmas, given the tree in the background. Mark was seated on the floor opening a gift and she could see the picture taker's reflection in a window, his uniform plain but the camera obscuring his face. She looked closer, frowning as she saw the burgeoning belly on her mother. It had to have been the Christmas her dad was gone, taken while he'd been a prisoner. Which meant the photographer couldn't have been her dad but some other officer.

She recognized the dried flowers as part of a corsage her mother was wearing in the picture.

Slightly puzzled, she set the picture down and picked up the letters, carefully unfolded both and started reading.

#

I feel horrible telling you this this way but circumstances don't give me much of a choice. I think you should know that our night, that one night…there were consequences to that night. I know it was wrong, that it was just the result of mutual grief, me over Jake and you over the miscarriage, but I can't regret it, I don't regret it, not now. The good news is since Jake transferred right before he shipped out, no one really knows us here, and given that he was only gone a month before he went MIA, no one should ever know for sure. I plan to leave the base and go back home to my parents soon, so the secret will be safe.

_I don't expect you to leave your wife for me, I don't want you to. Helen needs you more than I do. _

_I just wanted you to know about the baby, I feel I owe you that much. I know you've been having a hard time conceiving and…well I wanted you to know that even if you and Helen fail, you do have a child. _

_I'm sorry it's never a child you can know or love, but it has to be this way. I love Jacob too much to ever dishonor his memory, and you love Helen too much to do this to her. _

For the sake of both our mates, this is a secret we must take to our graves.

#

In shock, Sam reread the letter, amazed each time that the words didn't change. An affaire? Her mother had had an affaire? She reached for the envelope finding it unaddressed, stamped but never mailed. So she hadn't ever told him? Whoever Him was. There was no name, no indication of who her mother's lover was.

Remembering the second letter she picked it up, hoping that it would give her a clue.

#

I know by now that you've probably gotten official word, but I wanted to tell you that we found him. We found Jake. He's alive and mostly well. I won't lie to you, the last six months have been hard on him. He's got some old injuries and is skinny as hell, but he's in one piece.

_I'm talking to our CO now, seeing if I can wrangle you a trip out here. I think it'd do Jake a world of good to see you and Mark. He's done nothing but ask about you since we found him._

_I didn't tell him about much, just that you thought he was MIA, presumed KIA. I also didn't tell him about….us. What little 'us' there is, was. I understand if you want to tell him, or need to tell him. It might be best, however, if you wait until he's a little stronger. Right now he's…it's gonna be hard when he comes home. I hope you're prepared for that. The VC…they do things to a man's brain._

_I know I sound like a coward, and maybe I am. It's just with Helen finally pregnant and all…I gotta wonder if confessions will just do more harm than good._

_Just tell me what you want and I'll do it. I owe you, and Jacob, that much_.

#

Still not believing what was before her, she read it over and over, her mind trying to process the fact that her life had just been turned upside down.

  /

  Sam didn't sleep that night, didn't even try to sleep, and didn't even realize that the night had, in fact, gone on without her. She read, and reread, and reread the letters until each word, each syllable, was ingrained into her mind. She felt . . . shock. If indeed one could feel shock, if shock wasn't in fact, not feeling anything. She had chased that thought around her mind for a while, knowing it was a distraction but unable to do anything about it.

  She had tried the scientific approach, had broken down the situation into smaller bite sized pieces. Her father had been declared Killed In Action. Ok, so far so good. In her grief her mother had slept with someone else. She was ok with that. She was not Jacob Carter's daughter. Nope, that one still wouldn't go down right.

  She thought back to her childhood. Tried to find some clue, some indication. Had her mother looked at her and Mark differently? Had her father? Of course they had, she and Mark had been too different in almost every way to be looked at the same way by their parents. She never felt less loved by either of them.

  She knew she'd have to face the question of who eventually, but for now her mind refused to go there, and frankly, she was relieved. She was still trying to process not being her father's daughter, she couldn't even imagine trying to process being someone else's daughter.

  Dawn came and went, and it was almost mid-morning when Sam finally managed to move off the couch. She put everything back in the box, closed it, walked to her bedroom and shoved it as far as she could in the back of her closet.

  Out of sight, out of mind.

  Except it wasn't. She crawled into bed, thinking maybe she would get a better perspective after a few hours of sleep, but every time she closed her eyes she would see the Christmas picture, see the reflection of the man who was most possibly her father. She tossed and turned for an hour before calling the attempt a failure and moving on to her next relaxing activity.

  A dismal failure as well. No amount of candles  or soft music could force her mind to think of something else, and the hot water just wasn't hot enough to make her feel comfortable in her own skin again. By mid afternoon she had given up trying to relax, trying to forget, and surrendered to the need to be somewhere else.

 The base was shrouded in calm, or an eerie quiet. Sam couldn't be sure, she was usually part of that quiet. Part of the invisible people that were felt but not seen, the people in the labs, tinkering, testing, working, so absorbed in their work they were almost like ghosts.

  SG-1 was on downtime, Daniel had gone home yesterday, and Colonel O'Neill had taken Teal'c . . . somewhere. Part of her was glad, glad that she wouldn't have to pretend to be ok, to be normal. Another part of her wished for someone to pretend to, so that she could remember what normal felt like and maybe figure out how to get back there.

  Her eyes burned, her shoulders ached, and stomach clenched almost painfully with hunger, but she still managed to work for several hours. Wrapping her mind around alien circuitry, Daniel's translations on one side, equations, variables,. And various calculations on the other. This was where she belonged, here she was nothing but a brain, and right now that's all she could handle.

  Finally Sam felt ready to eat, and sleep, and so she went home, oddly eager to get back within sight of the box, almost needing confirmation that it really existed, that it hadn't  been some odd dream.

 /

  She was a little girl again playing in the front yard on just another base. As she played she noticed a man standing next to her, but when she turned her head he moved, always staying in her peripheral vision. She ran inside to her mother in the kitchen, her mother who was baking cookies.

  'There's a man,' she started to say but her mother interrupted her.

  'There's no man.' Sam ran to the living room, to her father, but the living room was POW camp and her father was lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer.

  'There's a man,' she tried to tell him, tried to explain.

  'There's no man,' he said calmly, soothingly, and then she realized that she was the one in the bed, she was the one dying. 'There's no man, go back to sleep.' But she couldn't go back to sleep, because if she did she would wake up as someone else, as something else, and she was afraid, she was terrified. She tried to get out of the bed but she couldn't move, and something was talking for her while whispering apologies into mind.

  'She's not yours,' Not-her was saying, 'She was never yours.' And the look on her father's face, the pain, the sadness. 'She's mine.'

  "Stop!" Sam didn't realize she was awake until she was sitting up, she didn't realize she was crying until she heard the sound of her own choked sobs. The darkness didn't frighten her, it was the silence.

/

Unable to sleep, she got out of bed, quickly dressing in the stillness of the house. As had become her habit of late, she abandoned her home, seeking refuge in the safety of the SGC. On her way out the door, almost as an after thought, she dug the box out of her closet, carefully tucking the pieces of paper into a pocket of her briefcase, reluctant to leave it at home. Once at the SGC she quickly made her way through the nearly deserted corridors. The dreams haunted her; the letters that had inspired those dreams haunted her more. Logic told her that whoever had had an affaire with her mother also served with her dad. Which meant there has to be a record of him, there was always a record, and the military was nearly obsessive about its record keeping.

And those records were going to shed some light on the newly spawned mystery of her conception. She entered her lap, turning on the lights but closing the door behind her. The last thing she needed or wanted at the moment was company.

Booting up her computer she quickly navigated her way to the Air Force archives and started searching in the records. Slightly daunted by the sheer number of units and men in action, she restarted her search, this time focusing on her father's service record and using it as a starting point.

Not surprisingly, the list was long, and just as not surprisingly, a good portion of the men on the list were dead.

Remembering the letter, she narrowed it down to men that had served with her dad in the year prior to her birth.

"Whoa," she whispered, recognizing one of the names. It shouldn't surprise her; she did know that they'd served together. She just hadn't realized they'd known each other for her whole life.

She saved the names to a list and set up a search, downloading the service records of all the men that had served with her dad during that year. She leaned forward on her stool, idly watching as name after name scrolled up on the screen. It was really quite hypnotic as the names danced and crawled, short, long, common, unique.

Her sleepless night finally taking its toll, her eyes drifted close, the steady hum of equipment and computers lulling her into a sound sleep.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

George Hammond walked down the halls of the SGC, acknowledging the nods and salutes of his personnel. It was rare that he had to do this, reign in one of his personnel. It wasn't that it was unheard of for personnel to get too curious, that happened all the time. It was just that, for the most part, the personnel of the SGC were the best of the best, the cream of the crop. And for the most part they behaved themselves.

George liked to think it was because he cut them some slack. He'd found over the years that if he treated his people with respect, they respected him in return.

Which was why he'd been surprised this morning to receive a report from the IT department, logging an intrusion into Air Force service records. It was true that his people had high clearance levels, and this person especially had a degree of latitude in her computer access. What puzzled him wasn't that she was looking into classified service records, she'd done that before when searching for someone to consult with about a find or piece of technology they'd brought back through the gate. What puzzled him was that she was looking into thirty-year-old service records. Not to discredit his generation, but she wasn't very likely to find a consultant among a bunch of old soldiers waiting to retire.

He wanted to think it was just some sort of mistake, a computer error or some sort of mistake in the date. It would be a simple enough matter to clear this up, and then he could head down to the commissary and get his breakfast before he started the rest of his day. "Major?" He announced himself as he walked into her lab. She looked up from her computer, the brief flicker of alarm and guilt that dashed across her face told him that he'd been wrong, she hadn't made a mistake and that her intrusion was deliberate.

Suddenly regretting not having his coffee before coming to see her, he closed the door to her lab, affording them some privacy as he figured out exactly what had made this forward thinking woman so interested in the past.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sam stared at the computer screen, blinking tired eyes as she scrolled through screen after screen, name after name. So many. Her father had served with so many men even during the course of one year. Some of them she could discount outright, the man in the picture had been clearly caucasion, and so all officers of color were easily eliminated. As were all the non commissioned officers given the officer's uniform the man had been wearing.

That still left her dozens to choose from, dozens of potential candidates. Why did it matter, she asked herself. Why did she feel so compelled to solve a mystery that could probably do more harm than good? So, maybe Jacob wasn't her biological father. He'd still been the man who'd held onto the back of her bike the first time she tried to ride a two-wheeler. He'd been the one to break the news that horrible day when her mother died, the first time in her life she ever remembered seeing him cry.

He was the one that had taken the week off work the winter she caught pneumonia and missed two weeks of school. It was his fumbling fingers that had pinned a corsage on her dress the day of her high school graduation. He was there the day she graduated from the academy, awkwardly offering her the use of his own lieutenant's bars. There may be no blood between them, but there was something more, something that ran deeper than mere blood and genetics.

Rubbing her hand over her face, she hit the enter button one last time, acknowledging that she'd set out on a futile search, one so clouded by the mists of time that she'd never really know. Her eyes catching a familiar name, she found herself reading the file, her curiosity overwhelming her sense of propriety.

She'd always known her CO was an extraordinary officer and that he'd had a long and distinguished career, but she hadn't realized just how distinguished. No wonder he never seemed to run out of contacts and favors to call in, she thought as award after award scrolled up the screen.

His personal information crept onto the screen and she idly read it, gasping slightly as a familiar name leapt off the screen.

Marital Status: Widowed, Margaret Hammond, deceased

                          Divorced, Helen Hammond, September 14, 1970

Desperate for confirmation, she scrambled for the sheaf of papers, pulling out the letter, her eyes scanning it, searching for confirmation.

_#_

_ It's just with Helen finally pregnant and all…I gotta wonder if confessions will just do more harm than good._

_Just tell me what you want and I'll do it. I owe you, and Jacob, that much_.

#

Helen…he'd been married before. He served with her father.

_#_

_I'm talking to our CO now._

#

The pieces came together, each of them fitting horribly in place. The name, the time…no, it had to be wrong. He couldn't. This was some silly cliché. Or a joke. It had to be a joke. Maybe the whole thing was some stupid practical joke. The colonel and Daniel were watching up on level 16 and were going to have a blast teasing her about it.

"Major." Oh God, she thought, looking up to see the last person in the universe she wanted to see standing in the doorway to her lab. She could only stare as he closed the door to her lab and crossed to her. "First thing this morning, I was notified by security of someone accessing classified personnel records," he said. "Would you care to explain that, Major?"

She shook her head slightly. "Sir, I'm sorry. I…"

"I know I gave you permission to access those files to help you find consultants and potential recruits, however I doubt you're going to find many people in the records you're looking at."

"No, sir," she said, her eyes darting down at the letter lying on her desk.

"What are you looking for?" he asked, his voice more gentle now.

"It doesn't matter, sir."

"I think it does. If there was something you wanted to know, all you had to do was ask."

"I don't think I could ask you this. I don't even think you know," she whispered.

"Major…Sam, what is it?"

Unable to put her question into words, she picked up the fragile piece of paper, handing it over to him. He frowned as he took it and she found herself studying his face as he read, looking for some sign in his expression. She saw his face pale as he read the few sentences, that involuntary act confirming her suspicision. "Where did you get this?"

"My uncle had some of my mom's stuff, he sent it to me…day before yesterday, do, before that. Last week I guess," she said, feeling a need to be honest with the information. "This was with it," She held out the picture and her mother's unsent letter. "I'm guessing she never said anything, there's no stamp on the letter," she explained. "I didn't even know what was going on, just this but then I thought maybe I could figure it out, but then I thought it was a bad idea, I mean, what difference could it make now, then just as I was going to stop your file came up and …" He looked to her, silencing her with a glance.

"This isn't the best place to be discussing this," he said, handing the papers back to her.

"Sir?"

"I haven't had my coffee yet," he explained. "If you can meet me topside in fifteen minutes, we'll go somewhere and talk," he invited.

 "Yes, sir."

He nodded, and then turned, opening the door and leaving the room.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sam sat at the small table unable to not feel self-conscious. The coffee shop they were at was a couple of miles away from the base, and while she knew there was nothing wrong in speaking with the general privately, she still couldn't shake the irrational fear that someone was going to come in and recognize them, leading to more questions than she wanted to deal with.

The general returned from the counter and placed a mug of coffee in front of her before taking the seat across from her. "Thank you," she said automatically, wrapping her hands around the colorful ceramic mug.

"There are times when I don't even remember being married before Margaret," he said after a few minutes. "Helen and I…" He sighed. "Helen and I got married because that's what you did in the sixties when the rabbit died. Especially when her father was also an officer on the base."

"She was pregnant," Sam said.

He nodded. "Yes. She had a miscarriage after two months, and then another later that year. Then I shipped out and fortunately, she found someone else. The divorce was as much her idea as it was mine, and honestly it was a relief."

"You knew my father," she prodded.

"Jake and I went through flight school together. We were assigned to the same squadron and spent a lot of the next few years following each other around from base to base. I actually stood up with him when he married your mom."

Sam shook her head. "She never talked about it, neither did he."

"They wouldn't. The world was different then, I know it sounds like a cliché, but it was. Jake and I, we lived in each other's pockets. The four of us, Helen, your mom, Jake and I were inseparable. The four musketeers we used to call ourselves. Jake and I went on our first tour, Helen and your mom stayed in Pearl. I caught some damn jungle rash and was shipped to Hawaii to R&R, Jake stayed in country." He shook his head. "Things weren't that great between Helen and I. She resented the fact that I wasn't there when she miscarried. And your mom, well your mom was in what was practically a foreign country with a toddler and not much else."

"That's when my dad was shot down," Sam said.

He nodded. "Yes. I was the one that broke the news to her. I stayed the night, on the couch. Unfortunately, Helen didn't see it that way. She had a jealous streak, and losing the baby only made it worse." He sighed. "Anyway, one thing led to another and… We promised never to speak of it. I did still care for Helen and…"

"It was a mistake," she said softly.

"It was two lonely and grieving people that acted on that grief, then regretted it," he corrected.

"So you never told him."

He shook his head. "No. And if Jake ever did the math, he never said anything. He was only in country for about a month when he was shot down, and you were a small baby."

"You never wondered? I mean you could do the math…sir," she finished awkwardly.

"I didn't want to do the math," he said. "Not for that reason," he hurried to say, apparently seeing the hurt flash across her face. "Jake…Jake was a ghost when we got him back. For weeks, he'd just sit there, lost in his memories. Then Catherine put you in his arms and I watched him come alive." He looked her in the eyes. "I couldn't take that from him."

"Not to mention what a charge of adultery would do to your career," she accused softly. "Cheating with the wife of a POW…" she broke off and looked down, swirling her coffee silently.

"If Jacob had not have come home, nothing," He reached out and stilled her hands, making her look up. "NOTHING would have stopped me from marrying your mom and claiming you."

She nodded, acknowledging his claim and saying nothing to refute it. In truth, she couldn't. He was right; the world was a different place thirty plus years ago. "Are you going to tell him?" he asked after a few minutes, breaking the silence.

"I…I don't know. Part of me thinks that he deserves to know but…what would it accomplish?" she asked, at that moment sincerely wishing that Uncle Irving wasn't such a pack rat. That her mother hadn't kept such dangerous mementos, that this one door to her past had remained stubbornly shut.

He pushed his cold cup of coffee aside. "It's your choice. You can contact your father when you come back to work and…I'll even tell him for you if you want me to." He stood up, pushing his chair back. "Take as long as you want. Your team is still on downtime and if you want some more time off, you just need to ask." He turned to leave, then turned back. "For what's it's worth, Sam, we honestly thought we were making the right decision," he said, then he left her, quietly walking out the door and leaving her alone with her thoughts.

/

  Sam sat in what felt like the most uncomfortable chair in the world, knees to chest, chin on knees, and watched her father sleep. Selmac had been pushing his metabolism to the limit trying to heal him. For the past two days if he hadn't been sleeping he had been eating. Janet was still amazed at the rate his wounds were healing. Martouf had done what he could before returning to the Tok'ra, but some wounds just needed time and rest.

  Janet had kept SG-1 in the infirmary overnight as well . . . going from one hell to another as the colonel so lovingly put it, making sure Janet was well out of earshot.

 When the Tok'ra signal came through the gate Sam was surprised and relieved that she genuinely wanted it to be Jacob. During the mission she hadn't had much time to contemplate her recent discoveries, she had been too wrapped up in Jolinar's memories, in her feelings. Even now Sam still felt as though she had betrayed a close friend by telling Martouf how Jolinar had escaped Netu, as well as the lingering feelings of Jolinar's guilt. Now, however, in the silence of the infirmary with the lights dimmed she could concentrate on her father's breathing and look deep inside herself.

 She had gone to rescue her father from hell without a second thought, well . . . without a third thought anyway. She would do it again, if asked. Jacob Carter had been her father her whole life, this discovery wouldn't, couldn't change that. She wouldn't let it.

 General Hammond on the other hand . . . Sam had no memories of him before her mother's funeral. After that he seemed to always be around. Showing up on holidays to invite them to dinner with his family. Mark hated birthdays, but George, they were too old to call him uncle, made it easier . . . sometimes. It would have been different if she had known then, when she was so angry with her father and so desperate for something she still couldn't identify. It would have been different then.

  "Major." The gruff voice broke her out of her contemplations. She looked up at him and made a move to stand, but he waved her back down. "How's he doing?" He stood next to her, and he had never looked so big to her before.

  "He's my dad," she said softly and returned her gaze to the sleeping form. He nodded, but she didn't see it. After a few moments he hesitantly rested his hand on her shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze before turning and walking away.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The screen door slammed and George looked up from his paper, the automatic chastisement dying on his lips as he watched his granddaughter run across the room, the mail clutched tightly in her hands. "Here you go, grandpa," she said, shoving them into his hand.

He took them with a smile and watched her leave, running out of the room as fast as she'd entered it. That was one thing about being a grandparent that was better than being a parent, he didn't have to keep up anymore, just had to keep an eye on them.  And considering some days he'd be hard pressed to keep pace with the girls even if he was twenty years younger, it suited him just fine.

He set the paper aside, automatically sorting the mail into piles to be read, and piles to be fed to the shredder. A colorful envelope caught his eyes and he pulled it out, studying it intently.  There was no return address, but he recognized the neat block print. Glancing out the window and seeing the girls still playing, he carefully opened the envelope, knowing that he'd have some privacy for the next several minutes at least.

A small photo slipped out of the card and he automatically caught it, recognizing the image. He'd always liked this picture, from the first time he saw it proudly displayed on Jake's mantle. He even knew the story behind it. Catherine had taken the children in for their school pictures and the photographer had had an extra frame at the end.

It was just how he remembered her, her long hair slightly mussed, very little make up on her face. She looked like a harried mother of two.

There was a lot of her daughter in her. Not just in the eyes and the hair, but her whole attitude. The two women possessed a similar spirit, a fact that he found amazing given their vastly different upbringings.

He set the picture down, opening the card to read the neatly printed words there.

#

I don't know if you have one of these, but it's always been a favorite of mine.

_Happy Father's Day_

#

George closed the card, carefully replacing it and the photo back in the envelope, torn between wanting to keep the memento and wanting to destroy it, knowing the hurt it could cause to his own children.

That was a decision he'd make later. Today, today he planned to spend thoroughly spoiling his granddaughters. Getting to his feet, he tucked the card away in a drawer and made his way outside. "Tessa, Kayla, how about some ice cream?" he called, wondering vaguely if he'd ever have more grand kids to spoil.

Fin


End file.
